And up here in the north? Minus 8 Celsius tonight, minus nine the next couple of nights, with highs of minus two. Sorry, but Shanghai is warm. Well, warm-ish. Well, a little chilly. The best part of living north of the Yellow River is central heating.

Christ. Well be lucky you aren’t paying for gas in the US. Me mum was telling me the other day — something that was formerly $8/unit has suddenly this month gone to $15/unit, and so seeing how much heat we needed last Jan Feb, our Jan Feb bills are gonna be $700-800 range for FRICKIN HEAT, and we’re only in Ohio!

I remember walking around on a super cold day in Shanghai with no coat and a t-shirt only. It really impresses the natives, you should give it a try! All these old dudes were giving me this strong arm pounding into 2nd arm hand motion. I think it means I’m cool — though my girlfriend at the time claimed it is the hand sign for “you are a retard”.

I had to change apts on Jan 1, without having ever seen the apt before. The first thing we did was go in to turn on the heat, and lo and behold…no heat! My gf and I froze for 5 days before they fixed the heat… I guess that’s just typical Chinese. My boss had looked at the apt before renting it, but didn’t even think to check out the heating. Bah! I’m off the the Ukraine this Jan 5th though…That’s going to be pretty cold I think. Right now the weather is 32F with snow showers in Kiev…I’m going to freeze. This is the second time that I’ve left the warm, balmy, awesome Florida winter for freezing cold… in 2004, I went to Shanghai, now to the Ukraine. And I don’t like the cold at all.

Jesus Christ. You all are too tough. For me Shanghai is so cold I want to cry, but it’s too cold to do even that. Why do people choose to live in such an environment? Even more I’m wondering, does all the spit freeze, and then stay there until Spring? I believe so.

I’m up to “wearing long underwear yet”, but you forgot a step after that one, the “late night run to the Quyang Carrefour to pick up an electric blanket” step. Great investment, but I’ve discovered it still doesn’t help with the getting-out-of-bed process. I suppose I’m getting closer to the “using the heat at night” step, or at least for an hour or two during the waking up process.

Whoo, I remember cold winters in Wuhan. Freezing. Living on res, with a tiny heater (by special dispensation), snowing outside, a thin door separating me from nature. I was a heavy consumer of hot water bottles, and double blankets.

The students could never understand why I was complaining – you are Norwegian they said. Yeah, but in Norway we have big luxurious isolated houses, buses, restaurants don’t open their doors wide open… In fact I joined a Haerbin girl in complaining, she was also used to indoor heating – while Wuhan is on the wrong side of the Yangtze, so none of that luxury.

True, I have been in shanghai in december 2005. I will be going again next week. The heating at some of the places just sucks. They left the door wide open after coming in. Need some common sense. Back in toronto, it was not like that at all.